Cal demolished by Washington

It isn’t often a Mike Montgomery-coached team gets humbled at home but that’s what happened to Cal basketball on Wednesday night as the Bears were pounded in every conceivable way by Washington in losing 62-47 at Haas Pavilion.

The Huskies did not take long to demonstrate their superior size, height, athletic ability and aggressiveness as they pulled away from an 18-18 tie in the first half to post a 34-20 lead at intermission.

It didn’t get any better in the second half for Cal, a team greatly diminished by lack of depth due to injuries. Regarding Montgomery’s bench, there’s no there there.

The loss represented a 1-2 start to the Pac-12 season for Cal, 9-6 overall. Washington is 10-5 and 2-0. It was a season low in points for Cal.

Cal needed everything it could get from the conference’s leading scorer, Allen Crabbe, but he was not able to respond, harried at every turn by the Huskies. Averaging 21.4 points coming into the game, he finished with nine.

Washington had a huge advantage on the boards, grabbing 48 rebounds to Cal’s 32.

Cal was unable to appreciably chip away at Washington’s lead as the second half progressed. For every move the Bears made, it was counteracted by the Huskies, as when Jeff Powers hit a jumper for Cal followed by a short hook shot by Washington’s Shawn Kemp Jr.

The exchange kept the Huskies up by 13 at 45-32 eight minutes into the second half.

That this would not be Cal’s night was demonstrated a couple minutes earlier when 6-foot-9 David Kravish missed a dunk.

What started out promising ended in disaster for Cal – and that was just the first half.

After posting an 11-8 lead in the early going, the Bears were outscored 26-9 the rest of the way by Washington, including a pivotal 16-2 run in the final 7:18 to make the score 34-20 at the break.

Rebounding told the story of the first half as the physically dominant Huskies bullied their way to a commanding 30-13 advantage on the board. It helped having a 7-footer doing the heavy lifting, he being senior Aziz N’Diaye with seven boards in the half.

Then again, shooting told a pretty convincing story as well. Cal shot just 8-of-22 from the field and had only one three-point attempt in the half. Worse yet, the home team converted only three of 10 chances from the free throw line.

Crabbe, the Pac-12’s leading scorer, had only five points in the half and took only five shots.

The Bears started falling apart in the last six minutes of the half, bullied about by the bigger, brawnier Huskies on both ends of the court. From an 18-18 tie with 7:18 before halftime, Washington went on a 16-0 run to move ahead 34-18 four minutes later.

Bak Bak finally got the Bears off 18 when his layup off an assist from Robert Thurman made it 34-20 with 2:41 before the break.

John Crumpacker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jcrumpacker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @crumpackeroncal